12/24/2005 @ 6:00AM

Peter Newcomb On Media

Paralyzed by its introspective hand-wringing over sourcing, ethics and accuracy, print journalism will cede even more turf to its electronic peers. While thats good news for bloggers and aggregators, the biggest incursions will be made by popular portals such as
Yahoo!
and
Google
, which will begin hiring entire teams of reporters to create their own news divisions.

The Unconventional Wisdom

Just about everyone has declared newspapers a dying medium. Which must mean its a good time to buy newspaper stocks. I know, that goes against what I see as the big trend next year, but you have to hedge your bets somehow. While most of the big chains are losing readers and advertisers, the one thing theyre not losing is money. I like the prospects for midsized operators like
Scripps
and
McClatchy
.

The Misplaced Assumption

That
DreamWorks Animation
was a flop. Judging by all the headlines and perfunctory postmortems, I must be the only one who thinks that
David
Geffen
David Geffen
,
Jeffrey
Katzenberg
Jeffrey Katzenberg
and Steven Spielberg deserve an Oscar for their roles in selling DreamWorks, first to Wall Street (shares of its cartoon division, DreamWorks Animation, began trading last year), then to Paramount, which recently paid $1.6 billion for the companys film library and live action movie business. Sure, their celebrated studio failed to live up to the hype, but given that the partners initial $100 million investment is now worth more than $1 billion, how bad are returns like that?

The Watch List

– Andy Lack.
Sony BMG
music chief and Dual Disc proponent will be forced to turn his chief executive position into a dual job with current chief operating officer Michael Smellie.

– David Geffen. Armed with an extremely liquid $4 billion, the former DreamWorker will team up with money man Eddie Lampert to make a sizeable investment in the entertainment business.

–
Steve
Jobs
Steve Jobs
. Look for him to play a bigger role in The Walt Disney Co.‘s
film and animation business.

The Bold Prediction

The Bancroft clan finally throws in the towel on its languishing newspaper fortune and sells
Dow Jones
, publisher of The Wall Street Journal.
News Corp.
owner
Rupert
Murdoch
Rupert Murdoch
would love to get his hands on the vaunted broadsheet, but the winning bid comes from the dark horse tandem of
Berkshire Hathaway
and
The Washington Post
.